Without You: A Requiem
by Jody Barsch
Summary: Post mid-season [5] finale: A grief-stricken Daryl Dixon carries Beth Greene's lifeless body from the hospital. She is gone, the sister he never had; the love he never allowed himself. The Hope too precious, and too delicate to last. Gone. And she had just been there- What happened? [Bethyl One shot]


**_As Miss Emily always says, "Hello lovers." How are we doing? For my part, not so well, Sunday night broke my heart. I went to my boss' office Tuesday (I got him hooked on the show last season) and demanded therapy just to be able to cope. Anyways, as our survivors have taught us:_**** Keep going. _This is a small requiem for Beth Greene and for the Beth/Daryl relationship that died before it could blossom._**

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_What happened?_ The question sears him, burning deep through. He'd had her, in his grasp, touched her even, and then she was gone. That golden hair, that so often had circled her head like a halo, splattered violent and red. Utterly, irrevocably, destroyed.

_What happened?_

The deal was done. Beth was with them. They'd been heading through the exit, back the way they'd come, moving out of the burned out shell of a city — away from the hospital, the abductors, and carnage; back to the woods. Back to Carl and Judith — how she would have loved to have seen the baby, to see how she's grown, to see that she lived— And then everything changed. Shifted. Shattered.

The steps he takes out into the cruel sunlight are slow and heavy. _Beth _— her small frame hangs limp and lifeless in his useless arms. _What good are they?_ They did not save her. Not that night back in the house, not this day in the hospital. _Useless. Feckless._ He'd fired the shot, the vengeful single shot, but it brought him no relief; it neither turned back time nor brought her back. For there she is, in his arms for the final time, Beth — what's left of her. All he can do is carry her, out of there, far away. To somewhere better. To somewhere green. Somewhere that will see sunlight, and flower blossoms. A burial. That is all that is left now. All he can give her. But it isn't enough.

Nowhere near enough.

_Beth_—

One foot after the other, treading the hardest path he ever has. He's held her before, carried her, when her ankle twisted; he carried her in his arms and on his back, all the while she was carrying his spirit, lifting and pulling his sunken trampled heart out of the blackness, out of the festering rotting abyss he'd lost himself in. He'd told her she was heavy, but in all respects Beth was _light_. That's _all_ she was: Bright, twinkling sunlight; fixed and steady. Like the North Star, burning brightly not just for him, but for all of them, holding each of them truer to their course, not letting them forget: What it was to have a spirit that could rise, soar even, above the wretched visceral brutality of the forsaken graceless world. Everyone in their group has lost something, more than some_thing_. Everyone in the group knows pain, and loss, and heartbreak, but it was Beth who didn't lose herself. Didn't give in. Didn't give up on what you could still be in this bestial world.

_Beth_—

_'I get it now.'_ — _What had she meant? What did she finally come to see in her last moment of life? In that last precious breath?_

Had he pushed her too hard? Had he worried too much on her behalf and hardened her too well? Did that blow she struck have its makings in his unwitting abandonment of her? He had not meant to leave her on her own. But she _was_ on her own, and whatever transpired in the interim led to the scissors, and her final act.

_What had happened?_

Beth was right, that night outside that old ramshackle still — he d_i_d think she was weak. How could he not? 'S small and pretty as she 's? He worried she wouldn't survive; when she spoke about not having changed enough what did he do? He taught her to track, he taught her to survive on her own— And she'd learned. Maybe, if he hadn't, things wouldn't have played out as they did in that hallway. Maybe Beth wouldn't have taken that risk—

It's getting harder to stand; the load is too much. If only he'd not let her out of his sight that night. If he'd only had her wait inside. If he'd only checked the damned door. If only they hadn't settled on staying.

'_I'm not going to leave you._' That's what she'd said. Her last ever words to him. But she h_a_s left him. Through no fault of her own. _Gone_. Forevermore gone.

Her poor body sags in his arms but it's the weight of his regrets that are too heavy to bear.

_Beth._

He's never walked steps harder than these. What is keeping him upright? Through the tears, through the regrets and the anguish, the world is grey and bleary, cold, and blood spattered, and just so much darker. _'The last man standing'_? What a merciless twist. He isn't standing, not for long. Not much longer, not in this world. This world can't stand much longer as it is. Without her— Having been so close to reaching her, to bringing her back, bringing her home to the group – the group finally nearly whole— He cannot bear it. He cannot endure. _Sophia. Dale. Lori. T-Dog. Andrea. Hershel. The kids. Bob._ Even _Merle_. This loss – this _after,_ without _her _– is not the same. _Beth?_ It's untenable. His legs are giving in; his body cannot withstand this pain. His heart is giving in.

_Why hadn't he intervened?_ If Beth had wanted her dead he would have done it. If Beth had wanted Noah he would have seen it done. Beth was always too headstrong. _Why hadn't he_—

_Why hadn't he kissed her? Sitting across from her that night at that table? Or ever? Or just held her?_ He'd missed her for weeks, relived the night he lost her over and over. He could have grabbed her, pulled her to him and never let go. Or the words. _Why hadn't he ever told her the words?_

Because.

Because he never had the words. Never had them taught to him when he was young. Never felt he could say them and know their true worth. He never knew the words his inner heart wished to say to Beth Greene, so he never spoke any at all. And now, it's too late.

_What happened?_

_Why hadn't he followed Rick instead of backing Tyreese?_ A Maelstrom of bullets would be better than this unbearable grief. If he could only go back to the house, back to when it was them in their own world, that night she sang to him, her and that golden bobbing ponytail and braid at the piano, he listening, trying not to let his heart take over, watching her from within the coffin. _How grossly prophetic_. What he wouldn't give. What he wouldn't give to have her still here, to have it had been him.

'_You're going to miss me so bad when I'm gone Daryl Dixon_.' Echoes of her soft sweet voice trill through him, once more of hundreds of times. Haunting him. Scorching his memories, emblazoning his unspeakable remorse. Still he holds her, a grip that can't let go.

Their family surrounds him but he hardly sees them, sinking so deeply in thick dense misery is he. His senses flood with a wailing, guttural release of raw agony and despair. Maggie's cries of despair. The sobbing sister to whom he must bear the miserable evidence of his failure — bringing back not the prodigal daughter but the slaughtered lamb.

Slaughtered. Murdered. Slain. Massacred. Destroyed.

_Beth_ —

The gentlest of them. Wrongly butchered just as her father had been.

Justice — if ever such a thing had existed — has forsaken this world. Along with Grace. Along with Beauty.

Nothing's left. Nothing remains but crude, abject bleakness. It will never end. This profane loss will torment him all his remaining days.

_Beth._

_His_ Beth.

_Their_ Beth — _all_ of theirs.

The sister he never had; the love he never allowed himself. The Hope too precious, and too delicate to last.

Gone.

Possibly unknowably the strongest one among them, shattered through and broken. Left lifeless and small on that anesthetized, cold unfeeling linoleum. He carries her through her funeral march. The regrets and sorrow drum through him like the sealing of a heavy death pall, resonating through the Georgian heat. This will be her only dirge.

_Who will sing for her? _There is no music left in the world without Beth Greene. Nothing left to be good.

Daryl Dixon falls to his knees.

The desolation. The emptiness left behind without her. The agonizing mournfulness. The unremitting regrets. The loss of all that might have been. All of it rages in him, even as the inner incarnations of himself burn inwards, to lifeless deadened ash.

_He gets it now._

What Carol'd been telling him.

The fire Beth had sparked in him the night they burned their pasts down and the old still down with them — it's turned against him. Too much pain. Too much loss. He_ has _been consumed.

And he cannot find his way back.

_Beth —_

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**_Thank you for reading! Would LOVE your thoughts! :)_**


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